Freedom? Integrity? Phooey! They are unnecessary as long as we trust "our" Government and allow it to care for us. Here -- let's listen to President Obama read a comforting story. Nobody can do it better.

Please, Great One, tell us more stories

Since only Tea Party "Terrorists" and global warming climate change are seen dangerous to life as we know it, our defenses against Morlocks are atrophying as the dependency addiction takes over.

To think that Morlocks are harmful, but that Tea Party Terrorists and climate change are not, is "racist." Don't worry, be happy and become more content as the process continues. In the meantime, all we need to do is to be kind to the Morlocks or pretend that they do not exist. It's for our own good. Sleep well!

On October 20th of last year, I posted an article about H.G. Wells' Eloi and Morlocks. It is republished below.

*****************************

Which are the Eloi and which is the Morlock?

I'm from the Government and want to helpeat you.

While re-reading H.G. Wells' The Time Machine, I remembered this post from September of last year (written before the Democrat national convention) and it seemed worth posting again. I had concluded that post with this observation:

We are sliding down a still tolerably comfortable slippery slope but its steepness and slipperiness are increasing. I hope that, before our still comfortable slide is halted by rocks and then by boulders at the bottom we may see them, turn aside and clamber back to the safety of a viable, perhaps even responsible and free, existence.

With the reelection of President Obama, continued Democrat control of the Senate and excessive numbers of RINOs in the House, the slippery slope has become steeper; the steepening seems likely to continue at least until after the 2014 elections.

In The Time Machine, the traveler discovered (in the year 802,701) two species of creatures surviving in what had once been England, but no humans as we know them. Both of the new species were distant and barely recognizable descendants of humans. There were Eloi, gentle and passive little folk, who could neither read nor write and had a very simple language. Words were rarely of more than one syllable and sentences were rarely of more than three words; they needed nothing more to convey their simple thoughts. There were also Morlocks, ape-like creatures who managed their Eloi herds, lived a subterranean existence and emerged only at night to capture Eloi and take them below to butcher, cook and eat.

Eloi had no work to do and produced nothing for themselves; any vestigial memories of ever having done so had vanished many ages before. They had only the "free stuff" provided by the Morlocks to maintain them and seemed content. The Morlocks had power and the Eloi had none. The Eloi needed the Morlocks to provide for them but sensed the dangers they presented. However, they had no weapons or other means of defense and could do nothing more than try to avoid the dark, when the Morlocks came out to prey on them.

Little if anything beyond the air that we breathe is free; nearly everything else has a cost. Sometimes it is money, sometimes it is gradual loss of freedom and hence increased servitude. In the case of the Eloi, the cost was to sink into blissful ignorance as they were bred and farmed like cattle by the Morlocks and then, like the cattle they had become, dinner. [Emphasis added.]

We are not yet at that point; we probably have many years to go before we get there. Those who live in the United States still have substantially more material possessions and freedom, and suffer from substantially less repression, than do the unfortunate people who live in Venezuela.

However, too many Americans are becoming increasingly like Eloi: weak and ignorant little creatures, pleased to produce nothing and to live off the Government teat. Seems extreme?Things could be worse but hang in there; they have been getting worse at a pace that continues to accelerate. The less "we the people" know, understand and care about how "our" Government functions, the more it will own us, the less self-sufficient we will become and the more closely our lives will resemble those of Venezuelans -- and, even worse, of Eloi. [Emphasis added]

*****************************

What are we going to do about it? Wake up, smell the fecal stench and defend ourselves while we still can, or be comforted by non-substantive political theater and rephrasings of President Obama's lies as we are eaten?

Time Machine is an interesting book, but it fall down as an analogy of current reality. The Morlocks are more capable than the Eloi, but predatory, while the Eloi are naive and dependent. It doesn't really map to the normal-free-person / parasite dichotomy we have now. Today, normal people are the competent ones, while it's the leftists who don't know how to do anything, while emotionally they range along the spectrum from naive to evil and predatory. The only thing leftists surpass the good guys at is politics and PR. Atlas Shrugged fits the current situation far better.

11
posted on 05/22/2014 12:26:15 PM PDT
by Still Thinking
(Freedom is NOT a loophole!)

Neal Stephenson, the SF author, wrote a very interesting essay proposing that the Morlocks were really the good guys in the story. They ran everything, fixed everything, provided the Eloi with an easy living, and all they asked in return was lunch. OK, I made that part up. But if you’ve ever hung with IT geeks, believe me, we resemble the Morlocks a lot more than the Eloi. Part if it, I’m sure, is body hair and personal hygiene...and the reaction when we see the sun after days of confinement underground...

I love Neal Stephenson! Cryptonomicon, Anthem, and Reamde are three of my favorite books. Snow Crash, Diamond Age and others are good too, although I couldn’t slog through that trilogy that’s back story for Cryptonomicon.

14
posted on 05/22/2014 2:48:58 PM PDT
by Still Thinking
(Freedom is NOT a loophole!)

I found it - it's in his book In The Beginning Was The Command Line. That's a delightfully dated volume now (originally published in 1999) but there's still some fun stuff inside. One observation in particular I recall vividly: "Linux is free only if your time has no value." That's less so these days but always worth starting an argument over.

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